


Don't Need a Religion

by stoopcrone



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, Undercover Missions, formatting fixed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7899358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoopcrone/pseuds/stoopcrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jedi Master Eff Enn Sven is a pretty big deal when it comes to this Force thing, mostly because he has his bodyguard Rey Skystrider to explain to him how it works. (Still not that way.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Need a Religion

**Author's Note:**

> For #8.

"There are so many of them," Finn said, as the Falcon was cleared for landing. "Why are there so many of them?"

Rey peered out at what Finn hoped was a welcoming committee. There were at least a dozen people down there, some of them in fancy dress but the rest in uniforms. "I don't sense any hostility," she said, but she didn't sound too sure of herself. She'd told him that according to Skywalker the Force worked differently for everybody, and that Skywalker didn't think she was very sensitive to emotions. Finn thought Skywalker didn't know what he was talking about. "That's a good sign, right?"

Before he could say anything, Chewbacca gave a grunt of reassurance--and, Finn thought, maybe a warning to him, because he'd been about to say that when you're a soldier you're not necessarily hostile to whoever you're going to gun down or take prisoner. For a lot of Stormtroopers, it had just been part of the job.

"Besides," she said, setting the ship down on the tarmac and cutting the thrusters. "There's only fifteen of them. We can take them."

They probably could, Finn thought, as long as they had Chewie on the Falcon to back them up. But he didn't really like their chances otherwise. The lightsaber hanging from his belt wasn't at all reassuring--he could use it, his training had been thorough enough to prove that first at Takodona and then again at Starkiller Base, but he wasn't as good with it as Rey was. And the fact that _he_ was carrying it around meant that Rey had a blaster instead, and she still didn't really know how to use them beyond the take the safety off, point and shoot part. If the Hons really hadn't asked them out for an investigative mission, things could go wrong fast.

Rey smiled at him, and maybe he was worrying too much about it. Yeah, he thought, he was definitely worrying too much about it, and then she said, "Let's go greet them, O Jedi Master."

Finn coughed nervously and straightened his clothes. They were weird. Not as weird as the things most of the Force users he'd known wore, thankfully, but still the short, belted robe, the long outer one, the breeches, they all made him feel like a character from an old holofilm, except all those characters were also old, and serious, and full of cryptic wisdom. Finn didn't have a beard. He didn't even have a braid. No one was going to look at him and think, yep, that's a Jedi.

"It'll be fine," Rey said again, and squeezed past him to let the ramp down, to go out and check the tarmac for threats.

But it was just them, and the dignitaries, and none of _them_ looked like they were going to pull a blaster from their heavily brocaded robes. And now that Finn could see their faces and postures up close, the honor guard looked bored. He knew what that was like. Boredom had been a pretty big part of being a Stormtrooper. Boredom, and sheer terror, and, in Finn's case, trying not to vomit.

He exhaled, and by the time he met up with them, he was feeling pretty good about this. He put his hands together and bowed, and then the dignitaries bowed back, and he bowed back.

"Welcome," said the Hon dignitary. It looked like human, and according to the best of New Republic intelligence, it probably was. They thought the planet had been colonized by humans centuries ago, but either with a limited enough initial population or a long enough period of isolation that after four or five centuries the Hons were noticeably different--shorter, and squatter, with unusually big and calloused feet that peeked out from beneath their fancy robes. Oh, and a second set of eyelids that Finn didn't notice until the dignitary blinked at him and creeped him the kriff out. "I am Hul na Gul, mayor of Hondon; this is Hel la Shan, our high priest; Min na Bu, representing the planetary board of commerce; and Dra na Gul, my wife." With each introduction, a Hon bowed, and Finn bowed back, but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to tell them apart later. Right now, Hel's clothing were at least much more purple than anyone else's, and Min's a lot fancier, but Hul and Dra looked pretty much the same. "We are greatly honored by the New Republic's prompt response to our request, and, of course, the presence of a Jedi once more."

"Uh," said Finn. He felt that required a bow, but he was getting kind of space-sick. "Thanks for the kind words. I am Eff Enn Sven--maybe you've heard of me--and this is my bodyguard Rey--Rey Skystrider." None of the dignitaries bowed to Rey, and Finn frowned, but she caught his eye and smiled at him, and he guessed this was how things were supposed to go. The Hons had complained of unusual activity around their spaceports, and there'd even been a report or two of a Knight of Ren hanging around, so the New Republic, and, more importantly, the Resistance, thought it might be a good idea to send a Jedi there to look into it.

But the Resistance also thought it might be a good idea to be a little cautious when it came to sending one of their two and a half Jedi. "Snoke will know about Rey by now," General Organa had said. "If it's a trap, let him think it didn't work--and if it's not a trap, he'll think we have Force users he doesn't know about. And we can't stand by while a Knight of Ren terrorizes any galactic citizens."

And Luke Skywalker couldn't really pass for anyone's bodyguard--couldn't really disguise himself unless he went around helmeted all the time. And that half a Jedi was on a super secret mission somewhere else. So that left Rey, and Finn wasn't going to stand by while she maybe walked into a trap or battled a bad guy. He was having a hard enough time standing by while the Hons acted like she wasn't important.

He bowed again, and Dra na Gul--he was pretty sure it was Dra na Gul--said, "But you are weary! You must come with us, and I will show you to your quarters."

\---

Amrap wasn't exactly a backwater. All its landmasses were mostly desert, but several important minerals were mined there, and one was rare and pricey enough to support some fairly sophisticated cities. Hondon was located under a rose-colored glass dome. Its architecture consisted of elegant, sweeping curves, and its plant life of jewel-colored cacti. There was a resort town about ten kilometers away, on the water, for buyers who wanted to round out the trip with a holiday. The trip out here was long enough to warrant one.

"Very nice," said Finn, and it wasn't just polite bullshit. He'd heard there would be a lot of sand, had immediately thought it'd be like Jakku, but this was a pleasant surprise. Dra na Gul--the other two and their bodyguards had peeled off to go back to sitting around looking important and pretending they had real jobs--beamed at him and launched into a brief history of Hon architecture and their tile industry, and Finn kept glancing around, both to take in the sights and to check for threats, but he didn't see any lurking weirdos in black, so all he had to do was make interested noises in the right places. He was a pretty good diplomat, he thought. He could get used to this.

But then they got to the City Hall, which, according to Dra, was part of what had been built several centuries ago as a palace, so there was an entire wing that had been maintained for visiting dignitaries such as Finn, and it was only Finn, and Rey, and Dra na Gul, and the luggage droids, and Dra said, "And your bodyguard can sleep in the servants' quarters," and Finn said, _"What?"_

Dra blinked. "It is traditional. I did not think you would object, Eff Enn Sven."

"Rey's kind of my bodyguard," said Finn. And the real Jedi, so she couldn't be too far away if anything Force-related came up. "I thought she'd be staying with me. Near me. One of the two. She usually does."

"But Amrap is a peaceful planet." Dra sounded hurt. "Hul and I have bodyguards, yes, but they are more of a formality than anything else. And a way to employ young Hons who are too tall to go into mining."

"Lady, you asked me here because there might be a Knight of Ren menacing your city. I'll take all the backup I can get."

Rey stepped in between them, put a hand on Finn's arm. "Eff Enn is concerned, my lady, because in the past our enemies in the First Order have tried to strike us while we were apart. He is sure you mean us no harm--as a Jedi, he can usually tell--but he is right, the Knights of Ren are no small threat, and even Jedi must sleep. If there is another room available nearby, we would be glad of it."

"Oh," said Dra. "Oh, I didn't quite think of it that way. The suite next door is empty, and, well, we _meant_ no offense. Most bodyguards do stay below. This war--this war, it is still so hard to believe." She fussed with her sleeves. "Meals will be sent to your rooms, of course, and you _will_ let the droids know if you need anything else, and we will see you tomorrow, at the official banquet." She hurried off, obviously flustered.

One of the luggage droids beeped disapprovingly at him. He grabbed his trunk from it and dragged it into his suite, and keyed the door shut reflexively, then keyed it opened again when he realized that Rey was still settling in next door, and they should go over the evidence so far and she needed to tell him what a Jedi would have already sensed, from what they'd passed downstairs to impressions about the city itself. Then he keyed it shut behind him because they should talk in her room, his room might be bugged.

"I didn't consider that," said Rey. Her room was smaller than his, with a narrow bed and an uncomfortable-looking couch she'd plopped on, her chin hanging over an armrest. Finn couldn't see any chairs, and while the tiled floor looked nice, it certainly wouldn't feel that way, so he sat down gingerly on Rey's bed. It didn't mean anything, he told himself. Well, it meant their hosts weren't big fans of chairs, but it didn't mean anything else. "Do you think we should scan for them? But no, if it was bugged, they wouldn't use ones you could catch with handheld scanners." She bit her lip. "We'd better just talk here. Or use a disruptor."

"Yeah," said Finn. "So? Did you feel anything suspicious?"

"No." Rey twisted around on the couch, propping her head up with one hand. "But I'm not very good at reading minds, or emotions. Master Luke says it's not one of my strengths, and I only did it that one time because Kylo Ren had already started a sort of conduit when he tried to read _my_ mind, and it left his wide open."

Finn shuddered. He actually hadn't thought there would be a downside to being able to read minds, but if that was the only mind you could read? No thanks. "What about anything disturbing the Force? You think the reports are true?"

Rey took a deep breath. "There's this sort of--sense of _wrongness_ , not in the city proper, I think, or it'd be clearer. But there's something rotten here, so, yeah, I think the reports are true."

"You'd be able to sense it if it got closer?"

"Yeah," Rey said again. "But I'm not--I'm not sure it will. The Hons may be used to peacetime living, but I was reading up on them on the trip, and they fought off two cartel invasions in the days of the Old Republic and overthrew a Hutt, and they still practice in case they'll need to again. Did you see the muscles on those honor guards?" No. No, Finn had not. He wished Rey hadn't either. "If there's only one Knight of Ren here, he'll stay hidden, and wait for us to try to track him down."

Yeah, Finn thought sourly, that sounded about right. Wait for them to track him down and by track him down he meant walk into a trap.

"But until then," said Rey, "Dra na Gul said we might like to take a look at their ornamental pools, and I think I would." She got to her feet, and held out one hand to Finn, and though he really didn't care about pools, ornamental or otherwise, there was no way he wasn't going.

\---

Finn woke up with the feeling that something wasn't quite right, and stumbled upright, disconcerted. It took him a minute to realize he wasn't in the Stormtrooper barracks, or on a Resistance base, or crammed into a ship's berth. Low light gleamed off the tiles, and he heard a kind of skittering.

It was coming from the walls.

Hondon was a peaceful city, so there weren't any fields protecting the buildings, not even around important diplomatic residences. That, or the na Guls were trying to get them killed. Finn fumbled for his comm, wanted to ask Rey if she was all right--but if he could hear them creeping around out there, they'd be able to hear him talking in here. He drew in a deep breath and grabbed the lightsaber instead. A blaster couldn't always shoot through the walls, but he felt fairly confident the lightsaber could slice right through them.

"Yeah," he muttered, "that's me. Confident."

The skittering stopped, and a voice said, "Finn?"

"Rey?" His pulse skyrocketed again. As long as they'd already hard him talking--he headed for the wall between their rooms and switched on the lightsaber, bathing the room in its weird pale blue light and wrinkling his nose at the smell of it. "Rey, are you okay?" If anyone was trying to hurt her he'd get to find out how sturdy the walls here were, and then he'd start in on whoever would dare--

"I," she said, "I can't get the window open."

It took Finn a second to process that, and luckily he managed to power down the lightsaber and stick it down the back of his sleep shorts before he undid the latch, or he might just have cut through the shutters. Rey was waiting below, and she started climbing back up as he reached out and helped pull her in.

"Rey?" he asked again, when she was standing in his room, not fifteen centimeters away. She seemed to be at a loss for words--embarrassed, he thought. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Her eyes snapped up to his and he could see her blush a little in the starlight. She lowered her voice to a whisper, so he had to lean in to hear. "I-- The greasy presence. I could feel it, moving in. I thought it might be going for you, so I--" She made a gesture towards the window. "I thought we'd be safer together."

"Yeah," said Finn, "better if we're together," and then wondered if he'd just said that out loud, but she just beamed at him and said, "Exactly."

Which was how he ended up waking up with one of her legs hooked over his, one of her arms slung over his stomach, her nose poking the back of his neck, and the worse case of morning wood he'd had in the last six years. Because with the threat lurking around out there, it wasn't enough that they stay in the same suite or the same room. It was better that they stay in the same bed, and although they'd started out on opposite sides of it, they'd ended up... here.

Finn breathed out. _From time to time,_ he told himself silently, _you may find yourself sexually attracted to a fellow Stormtrooper. This is normal and healthy. What is neither normal nor healthy is pressing your unwanted attentions upon your fellow stormtroopers. Not for military cohesion and not, if I hear about it, for you personally._ Finn had gotten pretty good at reciting that speech whenever Poe was out washing his X-wing in a pair of swimshorts and nothing else. Like all those times, it wasn't really the "normal physiological reaction" part that dissuaded Finn's dick, but the threat in Captain Phasma's voice as she gave that speech. SL-0920 said rumor had it she had castrated most of the reported offenders--and not chemically, either.

Granted, it didn't work quite so well because Captain Phasma was a long way away and no longer the boss of him, but Finn had an even stronger incentive in that he didn't want to make things weird between him and Rey. They were friends. They worked well together. She'd ignored his question about her possible hot boyfriend back on Jakku, and he could take a hint. Ruining what they had now seemed like a worse punishment than Phasma coming for your balls with a vibroblade.

He'd almost convinced himself when the door chimed, and Hul na Gul said, "Honored Jedi Sven?"

This was so not cool.

Rey bolted upright behind him at the same time Finn sat up in bed and their heads nearly collided. Hul na Gul continued, "Honored Jedi Sven, we wouldn't want you to be late for the banquet celebrating your arrival."

"Think they're legitimate?" Finn asked, as he dove for his outer Jedi robe and belted it around his waist, clipping the lightsaber on.

Rey bit her lip. "I don't know if we can afford to offend them. If they aren't, I'll be--" She slipped into the refresher, and Finn absolutely did not gulp nervously before he made his way to the door.

"My apologies," said Hul. Finn didn't think he sounded all that apologetic. "I know you had quite a long space flight, but we dine in one standard hour."

"No," said Finn. Outside the window, left open a crack from last night--and he didn't want to think about what Captain Phasma would have done to him for not securing the location--the planet's sun was rather high the sky, the air inside already growing warm. "Uh. Should have set an alarm, or something. Thanks."

"We attempted to wake your bodyguard first," said Hul, "but she did not answer."

Something clattered to the floor in the refresher, and Finn and Hul na Gul both stood stock still for a moment. And then the hint of suspicion in Hul's voice and on his face vanished.

"Ah," he said, "Dra did say that the two of you did not wish to be separated, and we had wondered--well, no matter. I am surprised, though; from what I know of the Old Republic, I believed all Jedi were sworn to celibacy."

"What?" said Finn.

\---

The banquet would have been impressive, Finn supposed, if he hadn't been distracted. There was a huge beast, a good ten times the size of the average Hon, crisped to perfection on the center table, and another roasting on a spit on in a fireplace you could park a TIE-fighter or three in. There were bowls of blue yogurt drink, and platters of small and glistening fruits, and fried pastries. Hul na Gul must have said something, because Rey was seated next to him, not sent down to the bodyguards' table or made to stand at attention behind him, and she promptly fell on her food like she was starving. In this at least Finn was probably a more believable Jedi and ambassador. First Order rations hadn't exactly been gourmet, but they hadn't been _bad_ , and there was always more than enough. Rey still ate like she didn't know how long it would be until her next meal.

Another visiting dignitary, a strange alien of a species Finn didn't recognize who'd been introduced as Stunklerump Poncington, raised an eyebrow, but just as it opened its mouth to comment it caught Finn's eye and promptly shut it again.

The food was--as Finn probably told an anxious Dra na Gul a hundred times--delicious, but he didn't have much of an appetite. _Celibate_ , he thought, watching Rey wash down her third kebab with fruit nectar. _Celibate._ Not that it should matter--they were just friends, good friends--but it did, because they were friends. What if she wanted to date somebody, even if it wasn't him, and couldn't, because the Jedi were supposed to be celibate? Why would they make her do that? Hadn't she done enough for the New Republic? She'd been without her family for so long, and now the Jedi were insisting she couldn't make one of her own?

Rey frowned, as if sensing the direction of his thoughts, and he coughed into his fist, looked away, and tried to decide what on his plate would keep his mouth busiest the longest if he chewed it so he could avoid answering her, when the lights in the hall flickered and then winked out.

There were still the large, west-facing glass windows to let in some light, and the fire over which the second of the huge beasts was roasting, so it wasn't like the room was plunged into total darkness, but it _felt_ like that somehow, something heavy and horrible and ominous in the air. Finn's breath caught in his throat and he got to his feet. Beside him, Rey was already standing.

"The presence--" she said.

"Sure it's not just Stunklerump over there?"

"No, it's--"

Something short and squat jumped down into the middle of the hall, landing on the center table with all the serving platters. At his side, Rey hissed and went for her blaster, but couldn't unclip it fast enough from her belt to stop the figure from throwing down what looked like a thermal detonator--

\--but turned out to be a stink bomb. The shouts of confusion turned into ones of disgust and sounds of gagging and vomiting, and of the Hons jumping up and stampeding for the exits and fresh air.

Finn nearly collided with or tripped over a few as he headed after the dark figure, and, more out of exasperation than anything else, he turned on the lightsaber to clear his path. The Hons backed away from its glow.

"Hey!" he yelled after the figure. "Hey! I've been in chutes that smelled ten times as bad as this, is that all you can--"

The figure whirled with a hissing sound of its own--not a lightsaber, but a barely sentient sound of rage and fury, and fired a blaster at him.

Finn brought the lightsaber up to meet it, and the shot sparked off, as did the second; the dark figure shrieked in fury, shook its gloved fist at him, and jumped through one of the windows, shattering it. The Hons shrank back from the rain of glass, and then forward again towards the fresh air.

"Finn," said Rey, hurrying towards him, "that was--"

"Our bad guy? I--"

 _"Amazing!"_ Rey said. Shattered glass aside, it was still pretty dark in there, but he could see her beaming at him.

"Yeah," he said, uncomfortably aware even now of the Hons watching him, of the Hons coming his way. "I mean, just part of being a Jedi Knight, and all that."

"We thank you," said Hel, making some weird kind of bow that involved bent knees. This was church guy, Finn remembered. "Who knows what sort of destruction the fiend might have wrought had you not been here to fight him off."

"You're welcome," Finn said. "Happy to help. Sorry about your banquet."

"We shall hold another," said Hul na Gul. Finn was definitely not as happy about this as Rey looked, but then he noticed someone had, in the mad dash to fresh air, punched Stunklerump in the proboscis. "A bigger banquet, for all of Hondon, and you may demonstrate to our younglings the ways of the Force."

Finn was getting to be pretty good diplomat, he thought, as he bowed back instead of blurting anything out. "I'd be honored," he said. "But my bodyguard and I, we kind of have to go after--I mean, give us leave to chase down the fiend, so that your second banquet can be held without fear of further disruption."

He thought he saw a flicker of discomfort on na Gul's face, but couldn't be sure. You didn't do a lot of looking at human faces as a stormtrooper, and the Hons weren't exactly human, and he'd only been a day among them. But he didn't have to be a Jedi to tell that something wasn't right.

"Of course," said Hul na Gul. "We thank you for your concern and dedication."

He might have continued, but Finn had already reached out to Rey, and started pulling her away from the banquet hall.

\---

"Okay," said Rey. "Finn, I can't really track that--that presence. I was expecting it to leave some sort of residue, but there's nothing." She turned to him, frustrated. They'd been running down the alleys of the city for almost an hour, it was getting hot and itchy in Finn's fake Jedi robes, and he wished they'd brought along a bottle of that fruit nectar. Or even the yogurt drink. Rey was faring a little better--she'd spent most of her life on a desert planet, after all--but there was sweat shining on her forehead and at her temples, and she stopped walking to lean against a wall and take advantage of its shadow. The dome was supposed to keep out the worst of the heat, but apparently this wasn't the worst, not yet. "How do you even track down a Knight of Ren?"

"Follow the trail of hacked-up equipment," said Finn, flopping down in the dust of the alley. "Although unless you had orders to approach him, that was usually a sign to run the other way."

Rey lowered herself to sit next to him, resting her elbows on her knees and looking at him. She actually took the former Stormtrooper thing a lot better than most people in the Resistance did. She wasn't suspicious or overly sympathetic, but she had punched him in the arm for lying to her, and then apologized for it almost immediately. "Well, this Knight of Ren didn't destroy anything after the window, so that's out." She sighed and put her head in her hands. "We're going to have to wait for him to strike again," she said glumly.

"Unless...." Finn turned to her. "Doesn't this seem weird?"

"Weird? How weird?"

"Like... this Knight, right? He's about the size and shape of one of the Hons. He shows up in the middle of a banquet they're holding for people who are specifically out here to deal with a reported Knight of Ren, and he throws a _stink bomb_ and breaks a window, but he doesn't actually hurt anyone--"

"He tried to shoot _you_ ," Rey interrupted, indignant.

Finn considered that. "Yeah, but I'm a badass Jedi, right? The Hons would expect me to be able to deflect a few blaster bolts. My point is, this Knight of Ren isn't exactly the kind of menace I would have expected--"

"He still tried to shoot you."

"--and maybe that's because he's not a Knight of Ren at all. Maybe he's one of the Hons, dressed up as a Knight, so they can bring a Jedi out to this planet and, I don't know," he faltered, because he couldn't really see why they'd want to lure a Jedi out, unless it was to catch Luke or Rey and sell them to the First Order, but once they'd gotten them there they wouldn't need to falsify the Knight of Ren to keep them hanging around. And if they were in cahoots with the First Order, they could get a real Knight of Ren to do their banquet-crashing for them. "--show off? Jedi Master Eff Enn Sven slept here, and all that stuff?"

Rey, who clearly had never heard of tourism--and how would she have, growing up on Jakku, which wasn't exactly anyone's idea of a vacation spot--looked doubtful, and then horrified. "Or so they could hit somewhere else," she said, pulling out her data pad and thumbing out a message, and then she stopped. "But it--he--feels vile. Not like any of the Hons. Not even like Kylo Ren."

"But _he's_ a Knight of Ren," said Finn. "And you're saying this Knight of Ren doesn't feel like the only Knight you've ever met?"

"You said there are seven of them." Rey put her data pad away. "And if the Hons were really pretending to have a Knight here, they'd have someone less foul pretending to do it. Someone they trusted. And I don't--I don't think they'd make themselves look bad, like that." She bit her lip. "Dra na Gul was almost in tears over the mess and the dishonor."

"She doesn't have to be in on it," Finn said, then stopped. "Maybe it was all a cover so they could surreptitiously kill someone during the confusion."

"Like who?"

"Stuckup--Stunklerump Poncington," said Finn, automatically.

"But they didn't," said Rey, "and why would anyone-- no, never mind. But that seems. Elaborate. Convoluted."

Finn snorted. "And the Hons don't seem elaborate and convoluted? I mean," he waved a hand at the architecture all around them. 

"Right," said Rey. "But then--then we really don't know what the Knight wants, or where he'll be, or how to defeat him."

"Last one's easy," said Finn. "We kill him."

That, Rey didn't argue with.

\---

There was dinner for both of them waiting in Finn's suite, and a holo that Finn didn't even notice until after he'd downed half a pitcher of fizzy nectar.

"I want once more to thank you for your actions this morning," said holo Hul na Gul, "and I hope you forgive the presumption in our providing a meal for you and your companion, but we Hons are an open-minded civilization, and certainly not constrained by old Jedi ways, so you need not feel you have to hide--"

Finn groaned and shut off the holo.

"Um," said Rey, a kebab halfway to her mouth. "What was that?"

"He, um. Did kind of guess that was you in the refresher this morning, and apparently he and Dra have decided that we're, um," said Finn, looking around the room to see if there was any of that fermented yogurt drink, because he desperately needed it suddenly, "a couple."

"Oh," said Rey, and her face went bright red and she glanced down at the food.

"And at that we're, you know, sneaking around because Jedi are supposed to be celibate."

She turned even redder, if that was possible, but looked back up at him. "Master Luke says he doesn't think that's necessary any more," she said, and he felt a spike of intense jealousy that she'd even asked. Who was she asking about? Poe? Poe was pretty hot, but Finn didn't think she and Poe had exchanged more than a dozen words, and they hadn't really been very nice ones. Wesley? Wesley was way too old for her, but she was definitely a little in love with that creepy murder droid of his. "But he also thinks I shouldn't, you know. Until after I'm done training. He says I don't need the distraction."

"I see," said Finn. She didn't need distraction. Maybe it was the droid. First Order propaganda had all sorts of things to say about the lax morals of the--

He realized that she looked for some reason disappointed--well, crushed--that he agreed with Luke about her having to wait to teach the murder droid how to love. "Hey," he said, and put his hand over hers. "You're not going to be in training forever, right? I mean, you've pretty much got this Jedi thing down."

She gave him a half-hearted smile and used her other hand to lift a pastry--yep, the na Guls had had a whole platter delivered, how much did they think normal humans ate?---to her mouth.

"Speaking of which," he said, lowering his voice and leaning across the table, "I have no idea what I'm going to tell the younglings tomorrow and you--you are the Jedi." Finn had once had _Han Solo_ tell him that he was wrong about the Force. He hadn't really learned anything more about it since because it wasn't like there were a lot of people who knew anything about it in the Resistance, as long as Rey was off training with Skywalker. Well, there was General Organa, but Finn didn't think she wanted to talk about it at all, so he was stuck with this idea of mystical mumbo-jumbo. And midi-chlorians were involved somehow, whatever those were.

"Okay," Rey said. She took a deep breath and a gulp of the fermented yogurt drink and settled back, her eyes fluttering closed.

Finn just stared at her.

"Stop that," she said, and took another deep breath, which really wasn't helping. "Master Luke and I meditate while he's teaching me about the Force. I know it looks weird, but I didn't realize how weird. Just--close your eyes or something. I can feel you staring."

She could _feel_ him staring? That wasn't good. Finn shut his eyes like she'd asked, but about ten seconds into her lecture he opened them and squinted at her, and then stared at her in dismay as he tried to imagine repeating this to a bunch of younglings. Maybe it would sound better from an old, gray, grizzled Jedi, but he tried to picture himself saying it and could only see himself getting laughed off the stage.

"Don't be anxious," said Rey. Her eyes were still closed, but she reached out and patted his hand anyway. "You'll do fine."

"And if I don't," said Finn sourly, "maybe the Force will send that Knight of Ren back to crash the party and save me from blowing our cover."

And that was _before_ Rey said that if their hosts thought they were a couple, maybe she should spend the night in his room again, especially with the Knight of Ren--"Who might not even be real," Finn objected, but Rey had said, "He tried to kill you, and I'm you're bodyguard, remember?"--running around like a rabid tauntaun. Finn barely got any sleep, hyper-alert to Rey's presence next to him, and then behind him, and then, just as he was falling asleep, she'd seemed to wake up and remember some bit of Force lore which she'd then murmured against the back of his neck. A little before dawn Finn finally got up and dashed off to the refresher for a humiliating two minutes of self-abuse and then a long, cold shower.

A droid came to their room soon after sunrise with a pot of kaf and a bowl of fruit, and cleared away last night's platters on its way out. Finn drank down two glasses of the kaf but his mind was still foggy and his focus mostly on Rey, who had spread out all over the bed in his absence. One of the buns had come loose and her hair spilled across her face, whistling upwards as she exhaled.

Sure, Finn had told himself he wouldn't stand in the way, but he hadn't said he wouldn't push anyone out of the way so that it'd be clearer for him. As long as it didn't involve challenging Mr. Bones to a duel. That droid was scary.

"Saved you some kaf," he said, when she woke up and blinked at him.

"Oh, thank the Force," she said. "I couldn't sleep last night at all."

"You neither?" He poured some kaf into one of those gold-filigreed glasses and brought it and a selection of fruit to her.

She shook her head and picked a slice of bright blue melon, alternating bits of that with sips of kaf.

"Hey, do you ever sometimes get the impression that Poe's crushing big time on General Organa?" Finn said. Rey spat a bit of kaf out. "I mean, he's always talking about all the things she's done, and how great she looks in those trousers, and he keeps track of how she's been wearing her hair and everything."

"I... wouldn't know," said Rey. She didn't meet his eyes, and grabbed a handful of berries. "You spend more time around him than I do."

"Yeah. But you like him, right?"

"He's okay." Rey drained her glass of kaf. "I mean, if it wasn't for him, you'd still be stuck in the First Order, and we'd never have met." Finn felt a little better. There really wasn't anything he could say to that, but he blurted out, "He's been asking, you know? If it would be weird to offer the general a shoulder to cry on. Now that her husband's dead. Or if he should wait."

"I'm sorry," said Rey, sounding miserable, and Finn thought that maybe he'd gone too far. "Um, I'm going to use the refresher."

He sorted of wanted to beat up Poe now, and he'd just talked Rey _out_ of the reason he'd previously wanted to beat up Poe. He also wanted to beat himself up for making Rey unhappy. He was pretty sure that Jedi were supposed to be smarter than this.

\---

The feast this time was in a bigger hall, a brighter hall. There were no roasting animals but still plenty of food, and if most of the guests seemed subdued and a little way, the baby Hons at the youngling table in the middle were loud and cheerful and full of life. For all that he hated what he'd done to Rey that morning, for all that the idea of giving a speech made him want to throw up multiple times and steal a shuttle and flee at least three systems away, for all that that probably not really a Knight of Ren was still lurking out there somewhere, Finn couldn't help but smile at them, and when he did, a hush fell over them and they all turned and looked at him.

"Eff Enn Sven," seven or eight of them breathed out at once.

"Can I see your lightsaber?" One bolder, but no less reverent-sounding youngling asked.

Finn tried to look very solemn and hoped he didn't come across as constipated instead. Some of those holofilms hadn't exactly had the best acting. "A lightsaber is not a toy," he told the youngling.

"It's a weapon, right?"

"It's a tool," said Finn, very gravely. He leaned in, and the younglings scooted to clear a place for him. Rey hung back, and even though Finn didn't have the Force or anything, he was pretty sure he could feel her amusement. "One which is sometimes necessary to carry out a Jedi's responsibilities to the galaxy. But can anyone tell me what is more important to a Jedi than his--or her, there are lady Jedi too--lightsaber?"

"The Force!" chorused a bunch of Honlings.

Finn grinned. He got this. "And can anyone tell me what the Force is?"

Once again, a bunch of Honlings answered, but this time there were a bunch of discordant answers ranging from "magic" to "dunno" to something about midi-chlorians again. Finn had asked Rey about that last night, but she didn't know either, and she said she didn't think Master Luke did either because he tried to hide it by switching his word order and giving her rocks to move about with her mind whenever she asked.

"That's okay," said Finn. "See, the Force is--it's all around us, and in us, and in everything that's all around us so it's going to be many different things to many different people. It's, uh, this life, this energy, that animates all the matter in the universe."

One of the smallest Honlings stopped in mid-pick to examine what it had just excavated from its nose, possibly for signs of the Force.

"It's like," said Finn, "when you look at your hands. They're your hands, but when you _really_ look at your hands, they're fingers, and nails, and flesh, and blood, and nerves, and your brain telling your hands to--" He wiggled his fingers, "--because they're your hands but they're also your _hands_."

The Honlings were now all looking at their hands, which was pretty gratifying, but their parents, Finn was becoming aware, weren't half so impressed.

"So," said Finn, standing up, "who wants to see me block blaster bolts with my lightsaber?"

That got a cheer, even from some of the adult Hons. Clearly word had spread about how he'd fought off the Knight of Ren and saved the hall full of Hons yesterday, and anyone who hadn't been there--and there were a _lot_ of Hons here--wanted something like a repeat performance. Rey gave him a grin as she helped the Hons clear a demonstration space for him in the middle of the hall, and a thumbs up when she pushed a bench out of the way with her mind and the Hons exclaimed with awe. Finn grinned back at her and gave the hall a bow.

A standard training bot floated in to about two meters away from him, and Finn took a deep breath and unclipped the lightsaber from his belt. He could feel something like a tickling along the back of his arms and shot a look at Rey, who nodded. She was going to have his back if his training failed.

He turned on the lightsaber, and for a second in the reverent silence it was all he could hear.

The bot must not have been set on what had been known to Stormtroopers as "hell" or "General Hux hates us," because it wasn't too fast or unexpected, and Finn blocked the first half dozen shots easily, the bursts of energy sizzling against Rey's lightsaber as the Hons mostly spoke in hushed whispers that he tried to ignore as he kept blocking shot after shot until the droid's preprogrammed two minutes were up. Then he shut off the lightsaber, fought back a grin and said as the standard old fogey Jedi in the old holos did, " _That_ is the Force."

Most of the Hons clapped for him. Some cheered. A few Honlings jumped up and down in place.

"Thank you," said Finn, "but it's really all part of--"

"Aren't you supposed to do that blindfolded?" drawled Shouldshutup Poncington.

Finn didn't show panic. That was not the Jedi way. "Bring it on," he said serenely, and added, too quietly for the Honlings to hear, "you galactic git." 

Rey came forward with a helmet, its visor down and opaque. She gnawed on her lip and asked even more quietly, "Do you trust me?"

"Do I trust you?" Finn repeated. "Of course I trust you, why do you even need to ask--"

She kissed him briefly on the lips, and dropped the helmet over his head while it was still spinning.

 _No_ , he told himself. _It's only because the Hons think we're a couple. Get your--get your head in the game._ The bot did its start-up sequence, beep-beep-beep, and Finn switched the lightsaber back on, and--

\--and this wasn't like the tickling at the back of his arms from earlier. This was something like Rey had been talking about, the sense of an energy, something beyond yourself, something far greater than only one person flowing through you from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, and he had a sense of Rey with him, and he just relaxed into it, and his body--

His body moved to swing the lightsaber up to block each shot. He would have said it was without any input from his brain, but it didn't feel like Rey was manipulating him like a puppet. Rather, she was telling him, like his eyes and ears would have, that _this_ was where the next blast was coming from, and his training was moving his arms and legs to meet it. Finn thought, as he effortlessly deflected each shot sight unseen, that if he had to give the talk about the Force now, he'd have been able to explain it so much better, but there was something about this he could never have put into words. But that might not have been the Force. That might have been the sense of him and Rey, the way it had felt from the very first time she'd taken his hand, like she was holding his hand again even though she was halfway across the room.

He thought that the Hons might have been cheering when the bot shut down again and he took off the helmet, but he wasn't really paying attention to them. He just looked at Rey as she came running up to him and he hugged her and said, "Wow," in her ear, and "Thanks," and she said, "I've never done that before!" back.

The Hons were actually cheering when they pulled apart. Finn thought he saw Dra na Gul wipe away a tear. "Think we succeeded?" he asked Rey, and she laughed.

"Uninspiring," sniffed Stunkleclump, and threw down what turned out to be some kind of napkin or bib for fish eating and not part of his carapace like Finn has assumed before stalking out of the hall.

"Things just can't get better," said Finn, and leaned in to return that kiss, even if it was just a between fake Jedi and real Jedi friends for good luck kiss, when there was a screech and a thump and a high-pitched wail of pain.

Finn and Rey broke apart. They dashed outside, followed by what seemed like half the Hons in the hall, and found a squashed lump of fine robes and hideous alien in the street, and a speeder bike swerving around the corner ahead.

"It's him!" Rey hissed and jumped on another speeder parked at the curb. "Get on the bike, F--Sven!"

He climbed on behind her, and had barely gotten an arm around her waist--and of course the Hons had smaller speeders, and of course he had to press up against her to keep from falling off--as the engine hummed to life. He was so close he could smell, under the ozone of the engine, her sweat, and something like the purple melon which she must have eaten while he was showing off his Force skills. Her stomach flexed under his arm, and the handle of her blaster bumped his elbow when they took corners. His knees were practically nestled inside the backs of hers. Thankfully he could mostly distract himself by the fact that they were chasing after someone who might have been a Knight of Ren, and things didn't get much unsexier than a Knight of Ren on a tiny speeder in what was soon the middle of the desert--

\--and then the Knight of Ren, between one dune and the next, seemed to vanish. Rey slowed the speeder, then stopped it, and they both climbed off. Finn wobbled a little, his legs cramping as he tried to walk. He gave up and crouched down in the sand and fell back into a sitting position.

"There's nothing." The speeder bikes threw up grooves in the sand as they went, but there was nothing here beyond the trace they'd left. "What the hell," he wheezed. "He didn't go up, did he?"

"That was a C-2000 class," said Rey. "They can't go higher than a meter, and I guess you could modify one, but it would needed external modifications too, and besides, where would you get the parts?"

Finn stared at her. She turned pink--pinker, she was flushed from the chase too, and the desert sun--and said, "What?"

"It's amazing. You knowing that. I mean, not you knowing that, but _anyone_ knowing that."

"It's how I used to earn my living," she said. "Well. Food."

There were a lot of things Finn wanted to say to that, but since he couldn't decide on which, he couldn't embarrass himself.

Rey frowned and plopped down onto the sand next to him. It didn't seem to bother her. "I still don't think that was a Hon," she said, "but you were definitely right about their primary target being Stunklebutt."

"Wh-- Oh, yeah. Shame he's not dead." Rey blinked at him, and Finn said, "I mean, the Knight's going to keep hanging around, being spooky and gross."

"And interrupting feasts," Rey said, with a sigh. "I thought--I thought it'd be easier, you know. I don't want to go back and tell Master Luke and General Organa I couldn't--"

Finn scrambled to his feet, holding out a hand to help Rey up, and the buzzing he'd heard grew louder, and the other speeder bike came blasting down the dune at them. Finn had time to get the lightsaber, but first he had to let go of Rey's hand, and the speeder bike was heading straight for them, and--

\--and then it wasn't. It was flying through the air, up and away, and Finn could see Rey's face screwed up in concentration, sweat beading at her temples.

_Oh._

The bike crashed in an explosion of parts as the Knight of Ren, having jumped off about ten meters up, shrieked and landed not far from them. Finn thought he was using the Force to steady his landing, but that wasn't so much of an issue as the puke-green blade that erupted from one of the Knight's fists.

Finn finally got a hold of Rey's lightsaber and switched it on.

The Knight gave another vocoder-distorted shriek. "You fake. You pretender. You are no Jedi."

"I can still cut you to shreds with this," said Finn, giving the lightsaber an experimental and hopefully ominous swing. He sounded a lot more confident than he felt.

The Knight turned his gaze from Finn to Rey, who held her blaster out.

"You are the Jedi," the Knight said, and started stalking towards her. "Skystrider."

"That's not actually my name," Rey said, thumbing the blaster's safety and puling the trigger.

Nothing happened, because she'd thumbed the safety on.

The Knight barked out a laugh and rushed at Rey-- "Oi!" Finn said, and ran after him--who ducked, dodged, and threw the blaster right into the Knight's face.

The Knight hissed and took another swing, but the blaster, instead of falling to the sand, reversed course mid-air and hit the Knight in the helmet again, and the Knight staggered back.

"Right," said Finn, and swung at the Knight's back. "Time for you to--"

Spin around and catch Finn's blow on his own blade, apparently. And then thrust Finn back a few steps with the Force, and bear down with an overhead slash that Finn blocked, but just barely, and the Knight laughed, and Finn knew what Rey meant when she said it was a greasy presence, something unhealthy, something abominably wrong.

"You _dare_ \--" he said, and pressed the blade down. He was about a foot shorter than Finn, so it should have been funny, it should have been easy to throw him off, but his malice had an almost physical, definitely oppressive weight. "You _dare_ to try to stop Fuye Ren, with no understanding of the Force and a weapon you have no right to use--"

Finn pushed the other's blade back, a little, but it was tough, and his teeth felt like they were going to crack he was clenching them so hard, and then there was another shriek and Fuye Ren was dragged backwards by his cape--

\--by the Force. By Rey.

Fuye Ren rounded on Rey, and Finn hacked at the back of his leg, then backpedalled out of the Knight's reach.

Ren stood there, breathing harshly through his vocoder. Finn was not letting him out of his sight, moving step by cautious step towards Rey. "You all right?" he muttered.

"Yeah," she said. "Thanks for--"

"You debase yourself," Fuye Ren hissed. "You are no Jedi, either. Strong in the Force, but I can feel it, your hatred--"

"You mean the blaster slapping you in the mask?" Rey snorted. "You want to feel that again?"

"Good," said the Knight. "Your anger, your fear, your power. They make you our natural ally. Cast aside this--commoner--and you can join us. I can feel how much you want him--"

"What," Finn said, and nearly dropped the lightsaber.

"--you cannot truly think there is anything someone of your destiny could--"

 _"What,"_ said Rey. "Nothing? Finn is good--" A piece of the crashed speeder flew through the air, and Fuye Ren barely batted it aside in time, "--and brave--" another, and Rey stalked towards Ren, more twisted scraps of metal leaping through the air and flying about her as if eager to be the next one hurled at Ren, "--and kind--" A power cell slammed past the Knight's defenses and into his stomach, "--and loyal--"

She _liked_ him, Finn thought dazedly to himself. Well, he knew that, but she _like_ -liked him, and--

And Fuye Ren was laughing.

"Rey!" Finn shouted, and Rey stopped, and flung her arms up as a wave of sand rushed up from the dunes to break against some kind of Force shield.

Ren got back to his feet, limping a little but having no trouble holding his lightsaber out. "Then," he said, "if you will not join us--"

"Hey," said Finn, and Ren's head snapped around. He tossed Rey's lightsaber from one hand to the other. "It's not really that great a club," he said.

Fuye Ren's free fist clenched.

"Or that exclusive, really," said Finn. "I mean, anyone can pass themselves off as a Force-user these days. I mean, I have." Behind Ren, Rey was standing up, shaking sand out of her robes, and Finn felt--well, sympathy, because sand got everywhere, but mostly like he was the luckiest person in the universe because she wanted him, and she thought he was pretty great, and he _felt_ pretty great--

\--and fear, because he was staring at Rey, and however easily Fuye Ren was riled up by Finn using a lightsaber and by Eff Enn Sven being a more impressive Force-User than the Knight could ever hope to be, he wasn't completely stupid, and after a few times was bound to have figured it out that Finn and Rey were working together to kick his ass.

"I mean, I thought you were a Hon dressed up in engine room garbage--"

"Enough talk." Faye's lightsaber swung around towards Rey, who was lifting debris up again but took a wary step all the same. "If you will not join us, you will die," he said, "as will that dumb _brute_ you desire."

He was trying, Finn realized, to goad Rey into attacking him, and it might just work, so he shouted, "That's the best you've got?"

Ren shook his head, as if annoyed by a sandfly.

"I'd rather be a dumb brute than a Knight of Ren," said Finn, and there was the slightest pause in the Knight's step. "Especially you."

Ren's helmet stared at him again. "Oh?" he spat.

"Yeah," said Finn. "Your hair is like a flock of morak." He had no idea what that meant, but he'd heard General Hux say it to Kylo Ren, so he knew it had to be a deadly insult.

Still, he wasn't prepared for how well it worked. Fuye Ren let out an unholy screech of rage and rushed at Finn, lightsaber flashing wildly. Finn barely sidestepped in time, and Fuye Ren was after him.

Finn resolved to never say that again, as he parried furious blow after furious blow. Although it was possible he wouldn't get the chance to say anything ever again, Fuye Ren was so maddened, a stream of gibberish pouring out from his vocoder. Something hit Ren's helmet, and the gibberish remained gibberish but seemed to get an octave higher. The speeder parts struck Ren again, and again, and though it threw him off balance it didn't divert him from his goal, which was apparently to kill Finn any way he could. Finn kept an eye out for the flying pieces of machinery, and after two tries, managed to time it right. Fuye Ren lurched to the side with the blow, and Finn stabbed Rey's lightsaber through the Knight's chest.

He wasn't even sure the Knight realized what had happened before the puke-green blade blinked out of existence and his knees buckled and his body crumpled and he fell onto the sand.

Finn switched off Rey's lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. "Yeah, well," he began, but he found that he didn't really care enough to tell off a dead Knight of Ren, and he was kind of out of breath. He hurried towards Rey, as much as he could hurry. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "Thanks. That was pretty close there." Then she bit her lip, as if considering--and then leaned forward and hugged him.

He pulled her as close to him as he could. "We did it," he said. For a second there, he'd almost thought they might not. "We beat that-- Wait. _I'm_ the distraction?"

She turned her face away and he got an mouthful of her hair. "Yeah, but don't--I never want to--"

"I'm the distraction," he repeated, and then again. "I'm the distraction! I thought you and Poe--"

"Me? I thought _you_ and Poe--"

"What?" She'd said she couldn't read minds, she couldn't possibly have known about the X-Wing washing or the times it had shown up in Finn's dreams. "No."

"Good," she said fiercely.

"Not that I couldn't," he said, "I'm a brilliant Jedi warrior, everyone wants a piece of--"

She proved how true that was by kissing him, and that was lot more heated and a lot less just Jedi friends than the one at the the feast had been. And about five minutes, or forever, later, she had pushed him back, and was undoing his Jedi robes with a look of insanely hot concentration on her face, when her comm went off.

Finn groaned. "Don't answer that."

For a second it seemed like maybe she wouldn't, but then she bit her lip again--and he wanted to see her doing that for totally different reasons, and he wanted to get to bite it for her-- "It's important," she said. "I only have priority settings for you and Master Luke and General Organa."

Finn flopped back down, and instantly regretted it. He tried to hold still while Rey checked her comm, but she was still sitting on him and the sand was trickling into his robes and it itched, and he wanted to squirm, but _she was sitting on him_ , and his nearest pair of clean undershorts was back in Hondon.

Rey's face fell. 

"What?"

"There was an attack-- they think there will be more. Chewie's going to fly out and pick us up."

"How soon will he be here? Like, thirty minutes?" 

She raised an eyebrow, like she could tell what he was thinking, or maybe like she was thinking the same thing. "Like right now."

He could hear the ship approaching in the distance. Luke must have called Chewie first.

"It's a ten day journey back," she said, with a bit of a smile. "And the ship has beds."

"Well, in that case," Finn said, and Rey helped him to his feet. "Lots of responsibility, being a Jedi," he said, as Chewie landed, getting sand everywhere it hadn't gotten before. "Bad guys to slay, lectures to give, beds to use--"

She shut him up again. She did not use the Force.


End file.
